Not many readers of Teacher Toolkit will know the real reason I started this website – as an expectant father and having just lost my teaching job to redundancy, I found myself without work and 85 miles away from home in a hospital for three months.

One in four pupils

Did you know one in nine children are born premature and one in four premature births do not survive? Of those that do survive, one in four children develop SEN. Preterm children are at high risk of learning difficulties and research studies have shown they suffer from poor academic attainment by the age of 11, particularly in mathematics. It is mathematics that often proves to be the most challenging area of the curriculum.

As one would imagine, prematurity is a subject very close to my heart; as a teacher, school leader and as a parent having researched and lived this on both sides of the classroom. The impact of a premature birth on a child, a family and the pressures placed upon a school (due to lack of funding), rarely provides teachers with the resources to meet the needs of premature children.

Summer Born Children

For several years, the government has ignored updating its admissions guidelines to allow parents of summer-born children to delay the admissions point at which their child enters into formal schooling. In 2015, I faced my own challenges when having to select a ‘local school’ for my son – a process largely out of my hands.Teachers reading this blog, please be aware that there are children you are teaching who will have particular needs based on something way beyond all of our control; life and nature. But, one thing we can control is education policy to support all children. Nick Gibb MP has failed to update admissions guidance for summer born children; there have been some Department for Education updates, but at the moment not enough is being done to support pupils who need a little extra support.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Like any parent, if you want to know what motivates me, the above pictures give you my answer. Saturday 17th November 2018 is World Prematurity Day. What are you doing to raise the profile for children who have had a difficult start in life, who then have to survive within an education system that may or may not be meeting their needs?

When you are faced with an educational system that you love, which pushes good people out of the classroom for whatever reason, one has to make a choice. In 2011, I choose to fight back, then in 2017 I chose to do to it again. This may explain why I am determined to change the workload and wellbeing narrative for teachers – and for those teacher-parents who may find impossible to balance the classroom by simply wanting to be a mum/dad.

Related

@TeacherToolkit

In 2010, Ross Morrison McGill founded @TeacherToolkit from a simple Twitter account in which he rapidly became the 'most followed teacher on social media in the UK'. In 2015, he was nominated for '500 Most Influential People in Britain' in The Sunday Times as one of the most influential in the field of education - he remains the only classroom teacher to feature to this day ... Sharing online as @TeacherToolkit, he rebuilt this website (c2008) into what you are now reading, as one of the 'most influential blogs on education in the UK', winning the number one spot at the UK Blog Awards (2018). Today, he is currently a PGCE tutor and is researching 'social media and its influence on education policy' for his EdD at Cambridge University. In 1993, he started teaching and is an experienced school leader working in some of the toughest schools in London. He is also a former Teaching Awards winner for 'Teacher of the Year in a Secondary School, London' (2004) and has written several books on teaching (2013-2018). Read more...

3 thoughts on “A Boy Called Freddie …”

Wow! Freddie is an absolute hero. What a wonderful family he has around him too. I am on maternity leave at the moment, my daughter is 6 months old. I had a really challenging pregnancy, nearly delivering at 31 weeks and can safely say that as a teacher I will be focusing on raising the profile of the premature children in my class. I think parenthood really enhances your desire to focus on those with individual, very specific needs, something which of course as a teacher you always strive to achieve anyway. However, teachers who become parents are such an asset to a school and come with a whole new wealth of knowledge and regained passion ;more should be done to encourage them back to work in a part time capacity to balance work and family life.